July « 2008 « mattfahrner.com

Brilliant article with x-Hannaford CIO

By Matt Fahrner, on July 11th, 2008%

StorefrontBacktalk has a short but brilliant article with the former CIO, Bill Homa, of Hannaford grocery chain who suffered a major breach of credit card data:

http://storefrontbacktalk.com/story/071108homa

There are three particular points that stand out:

That Microsoft is still so hole ridden as to put your company at additional risk. That PCI is . . . → Read More: Brilliant article with x-Hannaford CIO

How to disable “dumprep.exe”

By Matt Fahrner, on July 10th, 2008%

If you’ve ever had a program spontaneously self destruct in Windows XP and/or you did a forced kill from the task manager for a “Not responding” application, you may have found it takes forever for things to come back to normal and meanwhile your drive is being banged on like crazy. Worse things usually drag . . . → Read More: How to disable “dumprep.exe”

WPA versus WPA2?

By Matt Fahrner, on July 10th, 2008%

So what’s the difference?

Not much or a lot depending on your opinion. WPA uses TKIP for key management, whereas WPA2 uses AES-CCMP. Usually depending on how the AP has been set up, you can use either (TKIP or AES-CCMP) interchangeably, thus using WPA or WPA2 as needed. Many older devices like those running Windows . . . → Read More: WPA versus WPA2?

WPA resources

By Matt Fahrner, on July 10th, 2008%

When researching using WPA on Ciscos I ran into a lot of useful URLs as resources. If you’re in the same bind, you may find them helpful too:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/wireless/ps4570/products_configuration_example09186a00801bd035.shtml http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-1035-6148543.html http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-1035-6148581.html http://i.t.com.com/i/tr/downloads/home/gou_secure-wireless-guide.pdf http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/secursw/ps2086/products_configuration_example09186a00801df0e4.shtml http://www.ccitraining.net/courses/cwls.shtml http://projectdream.org/publications/windows/eap-peap-cisco-windows-2003.html http://www.networkcomputing.com/1409/1409ws13.html http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/wireless/ps430/products_tech_note09186a008024aa4f.shtml http://cio.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/wireless/airo1100/accsspts/ap11icg/ivicgaut.htm http://www.networkworld.com/research/2002/0506whatisit.html http://tldp.org/HOWTO/html_single/8021X-HOWTO http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.1Q http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/wireless/access_point/12.2_15_JA/configuration/guide/s15vlan.html http://hardware.mcse.ms/archive80-2005-8-223677.html http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/access/mar_3200/wlsnotes/cfwlsmod.htm http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/solution/mblacrdg.pdf http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk389/tk621/technologies_tech_note09186a00800a7af6.shtml http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/cc/pd/witc/ao1200ap/prodlit/wrsec_an.htm

Not a pretty list, but still good to . . . → Read More: WPA resources

What is 801.1x?

By Matt Fahrner, on July 10th, 2008%

If you’re investigating things like enterprise WPA and/or NAC based network control you’ll probably run into the fact that it uses 802.1x protocol. So what is 802.1x?

Basically the long and short of it is IEEE 802.1x is just a protocol to pass EAP over wired/wireless LANs. EAP on the other hand is just a . . . → Read More: What is 801.1x?

If using WPA-PSK, use a long key!

By Matt Fahrner, on July 10th, 2008%

If you must use WPA-PSK (meaning WPA with a pre-shared key, rather than WPA using 802.1x authentication via Radius), make sure your key is sufficiently long. Ideally 20 characters or more.

To quote:

Robert Moskowitz’s article, “Weakness in Passphrase Choice in WPA Interface,” describes a theoretical attack on WPA passwords. The tools WPA-psk-bf, CoWPAtty and . . . → Read More: If using WPA-PSK, use a long key!

Disabling Firefox Resume From Crash

By Matt Fahrner, on July 10th, 2008%

Though to many it’s handy, personally I find Firefox‘s “Resume from Crash” function, well, annoying. This function makes it so that if Firefox is killed prematurely that the next time you start it you get an (annoying) popup that asks you if you want to restore the previous state/page(s) that Firefox was viewing.

I can . . . → Read More: Disabling Firefox Resume From Crash

ICANN to end (finally) domain tasting/kiting

By Matt Fahrner, on July 10th, 2008%

Domain “tasting” and “kiting“, which are where companies (often registrars) use a loophole in the domain purchase cancellation policy to hold domains without paying for them, are finally heading toward an end. Using “tasting” and “kiting” techniques a huge number of domains that otherwise would be available are held by corporations who essentially “squat” on . . . → Read More: ICANN to end (finally) domain tasting/kiting

My LinkedIn profile

By Matt Fahrner, on July 9th, 2008%

Of all the networking sites, LinkedIn appears to be about the most useful. Here’s the link to my personal profile:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/mattfahrner

Not that there is that much there to see about me.

Forget the stores…

By Matt Fahrner, on July 2nd, 2008%

If you’re looking for a new laptop, clearly the place to go is the airport!

Over 637,000 served!